Violence and Restraint in the Salvadoran Civil War, 1980–92

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates—to the extent that estimates of repertoires are available and believable for the Salvadoran case—that the Commander's Dilemma framework explains patterns of violence that other theoretical approaches cannot. Yet the patterns themselves are difficult, and in some cases impossible, to pin down. Some of the hypotheses laid out in the preceding chapters cannot be tested with confidence here. Thus, the chapter opens with a discussion of the difficulty of accurately estimating patterns of violence, and the tendency of political scientists—who are primarily interested in causal inference—to avoid the prior and more serious problem of descriptive inference. It then uses multiple systems estimation (MSE) and a variety of strategies to consider variations in repertoires of violence and restraint in the Salvadoran civil war.